A lawyer representing criminologists who may have interviewed Luka Rocco Magnotta before he allegedly dismembered and killed Concordia student Lin Jun...

MONTREAL - If Luka Magnotta’s lawyer has his way, the only people who will hear the evidence at his preliminary hearing will be courtroom officials.

Magnotta, 30, is charged with first-degree murder in the grisly murder last may of Jun Lin, a Chinese national who had been studying engineering at Concordia University. The hearing is slated to begin March 11 at Montreal’s Palais de justice.

Magnotta has also been charged with defiling Lin’s corpse, harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other politicians and mailing obscene material, including body parts and a video alleged to have been filmed as the crime took place.

The case became an international sensation because of the nature of the killing and because the suspect fled Canada, prompting an international manhunt, which ended in an internet café in Berlin on June 4.

There’s nothing unusual about seeking a publication ban on evidence at a preliminary hearing, which determines whether there is sufficient evidence to go to trial. Evidence heard under a publication ban cannot be transmitted in anyway until the case is either dropped or, if he or she stands trial, until a case is over and a verdict has been rendered.

But in a motion filed last week, Luc Leclair, Magnotta’s Toronto-based lawyer, informed crown prosecutor Louis Bouthillier and Justice Lori Weitzman that he will immediately seek to have everyone except lawyers and court officials banned from the hearing.

Section 537 (1) (h) of the Criminal Code of Canada stipulates that a justice who hears a case under a publication ban may “ order that no person other that the prosecutor, the accused and their counsel shall have access to or remain in the room in which the inquiry is held, where it appears to him that the ends of justice will be best served by so doing.”

Leclair could not be reached for comment Sunday. But in the motion, filed in Toronto Feb. 28, Leclair said “the ends of justice will be best served by doing so.” Specific causes, which refer to Magnotta’s personal and medical history, have been left blank, but Leclair promised to provide them to the court when the hearing begins.

Four weeks have been set aside for the pre-trial hearing.

At a planning session in January, the crown prosecutor said he initially planned to call 15 witnesses over two weeks, but had doubled the allotted time period because Leclair had refused to make any admissions to speed up the process, such as the identity of the victim, the accused or the day the crime occurred.

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